A great variety of food products is known to consumers in which an edible casing encloses an edible filling.
For example, filled chocolate candies comprise a chocolate casing enclosing a filling which may be liquid, semi-solid (creamy) or solid. The chocolate casing is frequently coated with a compact icing of sugar to prevent the chocolate from softening and smearing on grasping by hand. The proportion of the filling is usually substantial in that it amounts even to 50% by weight of the filled product.
In filled products made of dough the proportion of the filling is very low. For example, products known as "krapfen" are obtained by frying in boiling lard or oil a roundish lump of well-leavened dough, of a diameter of about 6-8 cm and even more; the final product is a soft, elastic piece weighing 60-70 g or more, containing a few grams of a filling typically consisting of a jam. Further for example, a laid-open German patent application No. 2,428,699 suggests a food product comprising a candy enclosed by a body of bread with the view to obtain a filled product having a strong bread character. The bread body in this product is obtained in conventional way, that is from a dough containing a leaven or yeast; thus, similarly to the ordinary bread, the product has a short shelf life only, mainly due to its humidity content which causes growth of molds and impairs the stability of the enclosed candy.
Also known are biscuits or crackers comprising a thin-walled biscuit envelope enclosing a soft edible mass, usually of chocolate or cheese. These products are made by first stamping a wafer plate with an array of recesses, filling the recesses with cheese- or chocolate mass, superposing on said plate a counter-plate of wafer and jointing the plates by sticking. This production technique is clearly expensive and time-consuming; also, obtention of small-sized "snacks" (e.g. of peanut size) is practically impossible on economical basis.
It is also to be noted that the known filled products made from dough easily absorb aqueous liquids; thus, they do not float on the surface of milk or fruit-juice, for example. Certain unfilled friers for soups, of a generally spherical- or drop shape, have a tendency to float; however, they are produced from dough lumps fried in boiling fat and, therefore, are impregnated by a high percentage of boiled fat which is seldom only desirable.
It is an object of this invention to provide a small-sized, storable, food product, preferably of a generally spherical shape, with a shell of baked dough enclosing a soft filling, having an outstandingly long shelf life, said product comprising a very substantial proportion of the filling (referred to the overall weight of the product) and being capable of floating on the surface of aqueous liquids such as fruit juice or milk without losing its consistency. Also, in accordance with a further object of this invention, the shell of the product should not be smearing or sticky, so that no icing or other coating is necessary to prevent smearing. A still more particular object of the invention is to provide the said product in the form of a ball of a size not exceeding (or not substantially exceeding) 2 cm, so that a charge of these balls may be factory-packaged in a sealed pocket-size bag of cellophane or the like without sticking therebetween and sold to the consumers similarily to sachets of peanuts, for example. A further object of this invention is to provide a process for making the said product.